They are called the “Greatest Generation”; they are
the Americans who survived the Great Depression, and
fought an epic war on two fronts to defeat the
German Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and the Imperial
Army of Japan to reclaim freedom for countries from
Europe to the Pacific. In my popular book “The
Mortarmen” I tell the story of my father’s unit
in World War II, the 87th Chemical Mortar
Battalion. The unit landed on Utah Beach on D-Day,
June 6, 1944 and was in combat for 326 straight
days, including the battles of Carentan, the
Cherbourg Peninsula, the Hurtgen Forest, and the
Battle of the Bulge.

My
father, 1LT Roy E. Connelly, was considered one of
the “old men” of the unit because he was twenty one
years old, and the average age of the men in the 87th
was nineteen when they landed on the beach in
Normandy. These men and their fellow soldiers won
the war and when they returned home my dad and
others took advantage of the G.I. bill to get an
education and then went on with their lives. They
got jobs, raised families, and patriotically
supported the country that they had fought to
defend. They did not expect the government to give
them free stuff and take care of them and their
families. In fact, they were so proud; they would
not have even considered such an offer.

My
father and mother raised my brother and me to
believe in the American dream, but also to be
prepared to earn it. I had my first job at age 15
and haven’t stopped working since that time. I
started out shining shoes on the weekends at a
neighbor’s barber shop, and mowing lawns. Then I
went to work as a laboratory assistant at the
University of Mississippi Medical Center, and after
that paid for my own college education by working in
the offshore oil fields during the summer.

I
was also a campus activist, but as a conservative. I
supported the concept of Victory in Vietnam and
supported our troops. I served as President of the
Young Republicans chapter and chapter chairman and
eventually state chairmen of the Young Americans for
Freedom. My main adversary on the campus was Dan,
the President of the Young Democrats. At LSU there
was an alley between the main student union building
and the theater and every Wednesday at noon it was
designated as free speech alley.

A
soap box was set up on the top of some steps and a
moderator made sure that anyone who had something
they wanted to say had the opportunity to do so. The
President of the Young Democrats and I used to have
epic debates in the alley. We passionately
challenged each other’s ideas and candidates, but
things were different then. After the debate Dan and
I would retire to the student union to have a few
beers together. We were actually good friends and
neither one of us would ever have tried to silence
the other. We both believed in the Constitution, and
especially in the right of free speech.

Neither of us had any tolerance for the crazies at
either end of the political spectrum. David Duke,
the notorious leader of the Ku Klux Klan was a
classmate of ours, although then he was the leader
of an organized chapter of the Nazi Party. There
were also plenty of crazies on the left, who were
perfectly willing to try and shut up anyone who
disagreed with them, and I was physically attacked
several times. After the first two times, when it
didn’t work out too well for my attackers that
approach was abandoned.

Also
back in those days Dan and I had the complete
support of the campus administration that believed
that college campuses were truly places where all
ideas should be expressed and discussed. I even had
my only weekly conservative column in the campus
newspaper. I was free to write a column on any
subject I chose and it was never censored or even
edited. Can you imagine that happening today at most
left wing controlled university campuses?

I
graduated from LSU and was commissioned a 2nd
Lieutenant in the U.S. Army reserve. Then I went to
law school and paid for it with a combination of
student loans and part time work. When I graduated,
the student loans were a burden, but I paid them off
fairly quickly. It never occurred to me that someone
else, such as American taxpayers should pay my debt,
just as it never occurred to me that I would not
have to compete to be successful.

Now,
let’s fast forward to today’s generation of college
students. They are truly part of the entitlement
generation, whether they are in college or not. They
have been taught that competition is unhealthy and
wrong. It started when they were young. They were
taught that if you play Little League baseball you
deserve a trophy even if your team never wins a
game. If you excel in school, that excellence cannot
be recognized because it might hurt the feelings of
those students who did not work as hard as you did.

The
only thing that many of the current college
generation excel at is political correctness. They
are demanding and getting so called safe spaces on
college campuses where they will be insulated from
having to hear anyone express ideas that they might
disagree with or be offended by. University
administrators and professors are using the doctrine
of political correctness to stifle free speech and
freedom of religion. On many college campuses and
even in elementary and high schools you cannot even
mention your religious beliefs unless you are a
Muslim.

As a
participant in this politically correct society you
have no Constitutional rights unless you are a
member of some designated minority group. If you are
a member of one of these groups that categorize
people because of your race, religion, ethnic
background, sexual orientation, or illegal immigrant
status you are victims of an oppressive society and
are therefore eligible for special privileges.
However, that is only applicable if you fully
subscribe to the progressive liberal philosophy of
being a slave on the liberal plantation.

You
must submit to giving up your God given rights to
exercise free will and express your true beliefs.
You must submit to the left wing philosophy that you
are two stupid to choose your own destiny, and you
must allow the masters of the plantation to make all
of your decisions for you. In return, the government
will take care of you and give you free stuff.

If
you are not a member of one of these favored groups
you may still qualify for the free stuff if you
acknowledge that you are a recipient of so called
“white privilege, and you are somehow guilty by
virtue of your race of unspecified crimes against
minorities.

The
fact is that we have allowed our educational system
and many of our governments at the local, state, and
federal levels to launch a propaganda war on our
children that has not taught them about our
Constitution, but taught them a revised version of
American history that portrays our nation as the
root of all of the evils in the world. This has
resulted in utterly ridiculous demands by college
students for even more special privileges.

In
some universities this consist of demands that if
students are active in pushing left wing causes such
at black lives matter, or even working in political
campaigns like that of crazy socialist Bernie
Sanders that their professors be prohibited from
giving them a grade lower than a “C”. In other
words, they want to attend a university for four
years, never go to class, take a test or a final
exam, and yet still get a degree. At Yale University
students are demanding that English literature
courses that teach the great works of poets and
playwrights like Shakespeare or Chaucer be banned,
because having to learn about the literary
accomplishments of white men creates a “hostile
environment” for minority students.

So
here they are, the perfect generation of wimps. They
are young people who are uneducated, who also
believe they are entitled to be taken care of by
either their parents or the government, or
preferably by both. They would never consider
joining the military to defend their country, and
have nothing but contempt for those who chose that
option. They are incapable of independent thought
and are therefore the perfect Nazi or Communist
drones. For
elitists like Obama or Clinton they are the perfect
generation because they will always do what do what
they are told. We have gone from the greatest
generation to the lost generation, and as a result
our Constitutional Republic is in grave danger.